Ethan Bass

Diff of a change the 'Getting Started in R - Tinyverse Edition' manuscript with a nice data.table improvement: inside a pair of ( ) we can place each chained operation on its own line improving readability. I.e. we have cw21 <- ( # use '(' to keep ops on separate lines cw[Time %in% c(0,21)] # i: select rows [, weight := Weight] # j: mutate [, Group := factor(Group)] [, .(Chick,Group,Time,weight)] # j: arrange [order(Chick,Time)] # i: order [1:5] # i: subset )

Josh Goldstein emailed me a nice tip for @rdatatable.bsky.social chaining: if we start a chained `data.table` operation inside a set of parens, we are no longer subject to the 'REPL constraint' and can keep each operation on a line. See ALT text. #rstats

Now in the pdf at github.com/eddelbuettel...

Trump administration drops appeal of court order blocking $1.2-billion UCLA settlement The Trump administration dropped its appeal of a major higher education case in which a federal judge blocked its $1.2-billion settlement proposal to UCLA over alleged civil rights violations. It will...

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence.

The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

All things considered, this is a relatively close race between an establishment Democrat who loves ICE and Israel (Krishamoorthi) and a progressive black woman in Julian Stratton who supports abolition and doesn't take PAC money

"for much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States"

Has anyone seen even one editorial anywhere? I've seen a small handful of opinion columns, but that's it. Let me know.

CHICAGOANS!!!!

Voting is open for the annual snowplow naming contest. And “Abolish Ice” is one of the options.

You know what to do (vote): chicagoshovels.org

Five-year-old deported to Honduras despite being US citizen is latest child victim of Trump crackdown Mother whose visa application was pending says she will send girl back to US soon accompanied by another relative

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Rubbish paper "Is Pee Stored in the Balls" with broken diagram, broken, table, and bullshit text.

So initial experiments with Open AI's vibe-coding science tool Prism are going about as well as expected.

1. The thing about science that these jokers don't understand is that science cannot be vibe-coded.

Whatever its flaws, the point with vibe coding is that you're trying to quickly make something that sorta works, where you can immediately sorta see if it sorta works and then sorta use it.

EMERGENCY RENT FUND: Support Workers in Minnesota Rent is due FEBRUARY 1st. Support our Emergency Rent Fund for Minnesotan workers and families facing eviction due to ICE Raids. We are calling for a rent moratorium, but regardless of if that happens ...

Trusted friends in Minneapolis tell me that this fund is supporting many people but does not have enough money. If you can give, please do: chuffed.org/project/1671...

Fox News said Tom Homan should be sent to Minnesota — 20 minutes later, Trump did exactly that | CNN Business As MAGA media frets over the optics of the Alex Pretti shooting, Brian Kilmeade repeatedly floated a suggestion to the president over Fox’s airwaves on Monday.

Trump is sending Tom Homan into Minneapolis.

Homan is the guy who appears to have taken a $50,000 bribe in a federal undercover law-enforcement sting.

www.cnn.com/2026/01/26/m...

A lot more people should know about the bravery Marimar Martinez displayed in the midst of Chicago’s occupation and the murder of two observers in MSP. They tried to kill her, shooting her 5 times, and it’s a miracle she’s alive to push for transparency like this after being persecuted by the DOJ.

A Statement From Tom — 1/26/26 "I failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis. I hear the anger from many of my constituents, and I take responsibility for that. I have long been critical of ICE's unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that. The senseless and tragic murder of Alex Pretti underscores what happens when untrained federal agents operate without accountability. President Trump must immediately end "Operation Metro Surge" and ICE's occupation of Minneapolis that has sown chaos, led to tragedy, and undermined experienced local law enforcement." —Congressman Tom Suozzi (NY-3)

Rep. Tom Suozzi(D-NY), getting raked over the coals for his vote for more ICE funding, says in a campaign email that he didn’t understand what he was doing

Family of man killed by off-duty ICE agent in LA demands charges: ‘The ache will never go away’ After Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis, calls grow for accountability in the shooting of Keith Porter Jr on New Year’s Eve

“The shooting of Porter, who leaves behind daughters aged 10 and 20, was not caught on camera”

How convenient for ICE

White lily with purple and creamy center bits and a fly on one petal

Calochortus gunnisonii, our Gunnison's Mariposa Lily, blooming in Lower McCollough Gulch with pollinator fly #nativeplants

#FallBackFlowers #FallBack to July 25 🌿

Good afternoon from downtown Chicago, where despite heavy snowfall, thousands have gathered for an anti-ICE/CBP demonstration in solidarity with the Twin Cities. More are still streaming in.

Lt. Illinois Gov. Juliana Stratton just addressed the crowd, and called for ICE to be abolished.

The key to the far right’s recent ascendence is the realization that if they simply go on traditional or social media and describe things that are completely false but they’d prefer to be true, many people will treat this fictitious reality as, at least, a competing theory that must be dignified.

Henry Cuellar Contributors 2001-2024 Top contributors GEO Group Total $164,990. Individual $100,800. PACs $64,390

Henry Cuellar is the concentration-camp contractor GEO Group's Man in Congress

Why is @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social letting a criminal ICE fanboy be his lead negotiator on ICE appropriations?

We still don't know the names of the ICE agents who killed Gonzàlez behind the wheel of his car outside Chicago in September.

They were unmasked in this BWC footage from Franklin Park police.

If you have any information at all about these men—please text us on Signal at unraveled.66

Journalists need to ask, “What made Pettri a ‘suspect’?” He was ‘seized’ under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which requires *probable cause that he was committing a crime*

MAKE THEM ARTICULATE THE BASIS FOR THE SEIZURE

Chris Murphy: "This is really scary because what Bovino essentially told you is that if you just happen to be present when they are undertaking an operation, if you pull out your phone to record it, the use of force against you is justified. That is not true, it's not what the law says."

2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody The deaths came as the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement, detaining a record number of people

32 others died at the hands of ICE in 2025. Do not forget them.

2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

National Nurses United (@nationalnurses.bsky.social) The largest RN union in U.S. history, with more than 225,000 nurses nationwide.

NEWS: @nationalnurses.bsky.social “demands Congress abolish ICE entirely. We will be doing everything in our power to vote out any elected official who supports funding for this all-out assault on the health, safety, and civil rights of our people.”

Dana Bash grills Bovino to provide any evidence that Alex Pretti "assaulted law enforcement" and Bovino has absolutely nothing

Alex Pretti from his early days working at the VA

Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now

Alex Pretti was a colleague at the VA. We hired him to recruit for our trial. He became an ICU nurse- I lover working with him. He was a good kind person who lived to help and these fuckers executed him.

White. Hot. Rage.

Why would anyone trust a news organization that treats obvious truths as debatable? | Press Watch The ICE agent who killed Renee Nicole Good was the aggressor, not the victim. That’s not a hard one.

News organizations can gain or lose trust by either acknowledging what people have seen with their own eyes — or calling it a jump ball. From 2 weeks ago: presswatchers.org/2026/01/why-...

If any Democrat in the Senate votes to fund ICE, they are voting for the summary execution of American citizens. It’s really that simple.

The amount of money that is currently going to fund immigration enforcement in the US is larger than the military budgets of every country in the world other than the US and China. We are witnessing a military assault on American cities by a wildly unpopular governing party.